In the essay, Frankfurt
sketches a theory of bullshit,
defining the concept and analyzing its applications. In particular,
Frankfurt distinguishes
bullshitting from lying; while the liar
deliberately makes false claims, the bullshitter is simply uninterested
in the truth.
Bullshitters
aim primarily to impress and persuade their audiences. While liars need
to know
the truth, the better to conceal it, the bullshitter, interested solely
in
advancing his own agenda, has no use for
the truth.
Following from this, Frankfurt claims that
"bullshit
is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

This
work
laid
the foundation for Frankfurt's 2006 follow-up book, On Truth.

Where have
we all seen what is
described here so incisively?

In essence, ‘the B-word’ is a total (or partial) indifference to the
truth and the underpinning data and facts, with ‘partial indifference’
being the source of the too-often-times observed fallacious argument
into which a fine thread of truth has been woven.

Basically, at the very core of ‘the B-word’ is an indifference to how
things really are; that is, an indifference to reality which,
appropriately, should be viewed as 'understanding the perceptions plus
a full knowledge of the facts'; rather than its half baked sibling.

It is what legal practitioners less steeped in the nobler ethics and
standards of their profession, such as honesty and integrity, mean when
they say, “Tell me what you want and I will construct the
argument. I am a lawyer and can argue anything!”

Independent, detailed analyses of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)
Program have raised very serious concerns. The total lack of
substantive responses to resulting questions put to the various
proponents of the Joint Strike Fighter around the world have led to
these queries (examples of which are attached) being distilled down to
the following very simple questions.

Is the behaviour defined by Professor Frankfurt, and the
attitudes/agendas that drive it, at the root of why the JSF Program has
achieved such traction in the marketplace? This while the JSF
commodity product is so disconnected from reality that repealing some
Laws of Physics and Laws of Commerce, as well as Common Sense, would be
the only way the jet could possibly meet many of its proponents’ claims?

Could this be the reason why standard risk assessments show there is
quite a high probability this program will go down in history as the
biggest aerospace and techno-strategic defence acquisition FUBAR, ever?

Could the
highly developed marketing strategies and new age management doctrines
such as
the Pentagon’s much vaunted but mathematically unsupportable concept of
CAIV
(Cost As an
Independent Variable)
and its logic flawed implementation within the JSF Program actually
have been a
way of generating the alternate realities and comfortable fictions that
are the
tools of trade of ‘the B-word’
artisans?

Would it be
possible the Goldilocks
Pricing
Strategy with its apples versus lemons comparison with the F-22A
Raptor and
the creation of a Prisoner’s
Dilemma as a follow on to the JSF Program’s early capture of the
political
leaderships within the partner nations be additional means for
reinforcing the
easy going perceptions of these alternate realities?

Independent
costing and risks analyses based on data compiled well before the
Global
Financial Crisis (GFC) and its much larger, more rapacious offspring,
the World
Economic Crisis (WEC), strongly support answers in the affirmative to
all such
questions.

Will the WEC
now be used to explain away cost increases and delays in schedule which
were
already inherent in the program or even to justify more outlandish
calls for
additional funding and even more time to complete? Surely not,
for a quite alarming and
frightening reason.

If the new US
Administration is coerced by such behaviour, as ’the B-word’ is
designed to do, and ends up endorsing the JSF
Program in its present form with its current and ongoing agendas like white anting all
competition, including the F-22A Raptor, this program will likely make
the WEC, itself another product of ‘the
B-word’, look like a mere stumble [1].

The WEC has brought into focus the serious consequences of sovereign
financial risks materialising whereas 'the B-word' that is the JSF
Program will put at risk the very sovereignty of all the participant
Nations, especially the US of A.

However, the
big difference with the WEC is that the resulting damages and effects
will be very
long term
but limited to only one half of the globe; the now most practiced
proliferators
of ‘the B-word’ itself - namely, the Western world.

If this is the
legacy left to our children, they will damn us all, not just those
responsible,
into and beyond our graves.

The current
Y-generation will be doomed to become the "Why?" generation when, in
a decade or three, they enquire as to why the great and mighty Western
democracies
were made to stumble then collapse from within, like most of history's
fallen
empires, and, in this case, how it transpired that truth and integrity
equated
to "Samson's hair".

Endnotes:

[1] The
term 'likely'
is used since the consequences or outcomes are still in the future -
though the
final driving decisions are nigh. However, standard risk
assessment, in
accordance with Australian Standard AS/NZS 4360:2004 under the
international
standard guidance of ISO31000, puts the consequences if this risk
materialises
as CATASTROPHIC and the probability of this risk arising as ALMOST
CERTAIN,
leading to an overall priority assessment of this risk as
EXTREME. Even
if the probability of this risk arising were to be down rated 2 levels
to MODERATE
(one level below LIKELY), the priority assessment of this risk would
still be
EXTREME.

Annex
-
Examples of Some of the Questions put to the JSF
Community in the Interests of a Strong Debate

For the
convenience of all and to
establish a common frame of reference, these questions are listed under
each of
the four elements of the JSF Program mantra, being “Affordability”,
“Lethality”, “Survivability” and “Supportability”.

These
are
some of the questions put to the JSF Program leadership, following
their recent call for the need for ‘a strong debate on the merits’.

Affordability

Background:

Independent
analyses on JSF affordability
have been done.A summary of
earlier analyses (circa 2002-06) may be found here.The attached file (PDF-A/USMC_DoN_2008.pdf)
provides
a summary of costs for the DoN JSF for the projected FYDP
(pre-WEC).

Australia
terminated evaluations under the
Air6000 New Air Combat Capability Project and entered the JSF SDD
Program back
in 2002.The Chief of the Air
Force advised the unit price for the JSF aircraft was going to be
“…about forty
million dollars”.

Current
Australian Defence and JSF Program
Office Plans have initial procurements of Block 3 F-35A JSF aircraft in
the
2012-2014 period.

The results of
risk based analyses of JSF
costing data from the pre-World Economic Crisis (WEC) era have been
provided to
Defence.These show the JSF unit
price would likely be around US$168 million (-10%/+30% variance range)
in the
2012-14 timeframe.

Using the same
methods of analysis, the
price estimated for the F-22A Raptor is around US$136 million.

In summary, in
2014 on a per unit
procurement cost basis, the Block 3 F-35A JSF would likely cost as
much, if not
more, than the F-22A Raptor would cost.

Opening
Questions:

In US
dollars, what was the pre-WEC
estimate of the unit procurement cost (UPC) for the Block 3
Configuration F-35A
JSF aircraft planned to be delivered in
2014?

Does this
price estimate include any
dollar amounts to cover any developmental or procurement or other risks?

If so,
what are these risks and what
amounts of money, in 2014 US dollars, have been allocated (in cost per
aircraft
terms, please) to cover each of these risks?

Lethality

Background:

Lethality is
measure of how much physical
damage a combat aircraft can inflict upon the enemy. It can
be measured, in the tactical context, by the number and size of
munitions
carried, and in the strategic context by the same plus the range
to
which such weapons can be delivered and the resulting effectiveness.

With
survivability dictating internal
carriage, the JSF is constrained to a pair of weapon bays, each sized
around a
single MK.84 size bomb, and a single AMRAAM.

The world has
moved on since the JSF was first specified, but somehow those defining
capability requirements have failed to keep pace, if not gone backwards
due to
CAIV.

This is a new
world where the aphorism ‘the quick and the dead’ applies.

Opening
Questions:

Why has
the range of weapon types intended
under SDD been so dramatically scaled back?

Is not
moving the certification of the
remaining weapons out of the SDD Phase and into the Operational Phase
what, in
keeping with modern day Risk Management Standards such as AS/NZS4360:2004, should be called Extreme Risk?

The weapon bay
configuration of the JSF with its canted carriage (about 5 degrees nose
in to
the centreline, I believe) and forward centroid location (both mass and
aerodynamic) relative to the aircraft’s CoG range, also presents
significant
risk to the carriage and clearance of weapons from these bays.

How is LM
planning to mitigate all such
risks to the clearance of weapons from these bays?

How does
the JSF Program intend to
accommodate internal carriage of more than two AAMs, and how many will
the
aircraft be able to ultimately carry internally and deliver?

Will each
of the JSF weapon bays
accommodate the carriage and delivery of 4 x SDB + an AAM and, if so,
when will
this be certificated?

What are
the in flight opening/closing
times for the weapon bay doors?

Survivability

Background:

Survivability
is a measure of what
fraction of a combat fleet remains alive in a given threat environment,
flying
repeated sorties over a sustained period of time.

What
threat Surface to Air Missile systems
and supporting radars was the JSF’s stealth capability modelled
against, and
which was it not modelled against?For
your convenience, a summary of the threat systems
may be found here.

What
threat combat aircraft types and
supporting systems was JSF’s stealth and aerodynamic capability
modelled
against, and which was it not modelled against?A
range
of the threat combat aircraft and supporting system
may be found here.

Why did
the JSF Program discard the flat
lower centre fuselage design of the X-35, and replace it with the complex
curvature
design of the SDD F-35, given that even the basic RCS
modelling
shows this would adversely impact the stealthiness of the aircraft when
illuminated from its side aspect?

Where is
the JSF escape system (pilot
ejection system) in its certification program and when do you expect
the system
to be certificated?

What will
be the envelope of the JSF pilot
ejection system?

What will
be the maximum speed at which
the JSF canopy will be certificated for bird strikes?

Supportability

Background:

Over the past
30 years, there have been
various attempts to reduce the life cycle costs of operating military
aircraft.Options strongly
supported by Industry have encouraged the transfer of risk and
responsibilities
to Industry.Such options have
included Total System Performance Responsibility (TSPR) contracting
models,
Public Private Partnership (PPP) contracting models and various other
outsourcing contract models.

With noted
exceptions, the military
customers’ satisfaction with such arrangements and their outcomes has
been less
than optimal.One recurring series
of complaint has been the consequential deskilling of the military
while cost
overall have not reduced and, from those of the pre-deskilling era,
observations and concerns about increasing loss of control of assets
leading to
truly sovereign risks for the clients – loss of the most basic of
sovereign controls of air combat assets – the aircraft’s configuration.

The latest
forms of addressing life cycle
costs are the performance based agreement (PBA) models and such things
as the
Autonomic Logistics Model of the JSF Program – elements of both having
been proposed to the P-3 Orion Maritime Patrol Aircraft community and,
more
recently, the C-130J Hercules Strategic Air Lift Aircraft community.

Opening
Questions:

What is
the estimated total cost per
flying hour, in USD/FH, for the Block 3 F-35A JSF in 2014 for a per
aircraft
flying rate of 350 hrs per annum and a fleet size of 100 aircraft
performing
all training missions and roles that achieves a level of preparedness
able to
fully utilise the full JSF capabilities, with repeatability?

What are
the JSF capabilities, training
sequences and rates of effort (ROEs) used to determine the answer to
the
preceding question?

Which
organisation or organisations will
have the ability and capabilities to control and change the technical
configurations of the JSF and its airborne and ground based systems?

By all
accounts, including using some of
the tools you and I were trained in at USNTPS, the approach speed of
the F-35A
is inordinately high – reportedly 180 KCAS.Is
this
the case?

If so,
what modelling/simulations have
been done to determine the levels of risk and hazards such a high
approach
speed presents to the operations and support of the F-35A JSF?

What is
the means of controlling the
temperatures of the ElectroHydroStatic Actuators (EHSA) used to drive
the F-35
JSF control surfaces and are these actuators rated for a continuous
duty cycle
at a loading above 100% of the JSF operational loading?If not, what is their duty cycle
rating?

Finally and
more generally, the results of
analyses undertaken by a number of domain experts around the world do
not
support the notion that the JSF will not be able to meet its original
specification. What they do indicate is, due to the effects of
management
decisions under paradigms like Cost as An Independent Variable (CAIV);
the
transfer of risks from the SDD Phase to the Operational Phase; and, the
extensive deskilling that has occurred in Departments and Ministries of
Defence
around the Western World, due to the end of the Cold War ‘peace
dividend’, this
specification will most likely not be met till around Block 6/7, circa
2020 or
later.

However, where
these independent analyses
converge is full agreement that the original JSF JORD specification and
the
specification to which the aircraft has been designed and is being
built are
based on threat assessments from an era past.This
combined
with the constraining nature of the original
air vehicle specification and the on going effects of expeditious
management
decisions made under CAIV, mean the overall capabilities of the JSF
will have
been surpassed by the middle of the next decade, if not earlier.

In summary, all
the indicators point to a penultimate
question -

Will the F-35
JSF be obsolete before its
time?

If not, then
why not, given where the JSF
Program is in its schedule and overall life cycle compared with where
the
developing threats are in theirs?

That being
said, there is much reason for a robust and strong debate.We
look
forward to your answers, along
with the supporting data, information and knowledge, at your earliest,
in the
spirit of working with you to get the best we can for those who fly as
our aim,
and confidently demonstrating this thesis (or its antithesis) with hard
data
and facts as the paramount measures of effectiveness of a strong debate.